Principles of Medical Ethics

Savvy healthcare consumers want to stay up to date on the moral issues around the changes in healthcare delivery. To do that, consumers seek to access plain language essays that are readable within the short amount of time they have but give enough information to trigger curiosity to learn more.

Cradle to grave issues are complicated but critical for the public to understand. SMM provides essays of 600-900 words on timely issues, researched and written by a bioethicist. SMM strives to translate the scholarly debates taking place within the halls of academia into everyday language that allows the reader to form their own opinion.

Professional journals and publications wax the philosophical on medical ethics. Many of these theoretical and curated articles eventually have an impact on public policy decisions affecting our healthcare delivery system. Autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and social justice are the four principles of medical ethics. However, interpretation of each of these principles can take policy decisions in different directions.

Medical Ethics Expert Lecturer

Healthcare decision-making is complex, especially in a world of limited financial resources and high demand. The story is not found in the headlines or the lead paragraph. A good essay consolidates the issues and stimulates consumers to think a little harder, a little longer and research a little deeper.

Consumers will only have a voice in the rapidly changing world of healthcare technologies and delivery if they are aware.

Susan M. Mathews, PhD, RN, MS Bioethics

I am a mother, a grandmother, an entrepreneur, and a medical ethics lecturer, speaker, and writer. I spent 20 years working as an RN in Intensive Care Units before working with a statewide health insurance company to launch a national managed care program.

I continued my education part time until I had completed a PhD in Healthcare Administration followed by founding a healthcare services company that directly contracted primary care, occupational healthcare, and pharmacy services to self-insured Fortune 500 companies. Our company became the largest in the country before it was acquired by Walgreens in 2008.

In 2012, I enrolled in a Master of Science in Bioethics program through Union Graduate College (now Clarkson University) and the Icahn School of Medicine and completed the degree in 2014. And, to update my thinking in 2017, I spent seven weeks at the Sherwin B. Nuland Intensive Summer Institute on Bioethics at Yale.

I continue to serve on multiple Boards of Directors, and I volunteer by offering lectures in medical ethics for the Lifelong Learning Institute at Indian River State College in Fort Pierce, FL.

My goal for this website and for all of my writings and lectures on medical ethics is to translate the scholarly debates taking place within the walls of academia into everyday language.